USA > Massachusetts > Essex County > Andover > The sesquicentennial record : in commemoration of the one hundred and fiftieth anniversary of the founding of Phillips Academy, Andover, Mass., May 18, 19, 1928 > Part 7
Note: The text from this book was generated using artificial intelligence so there may be some errors. The full pages can be found on Archive.org (link on the Part 1 page).
Part 1 | Part 2 | Part 3 | Part 4 | Part 5 | Part 6 | Part 7 | Part 8 | Part 9 | Part 10 | Part 11
"As a youngster of five I learned to know Henry L. Stimson, and later, before entering the school, became well acquainted with such men as Vance McCormick, Clarence Morgan, John Greenway, and Fred Murphy. Among my own classmates who stand out in my memory are Fred Allen, Edward C. Carter, Arthur Drinkwater, and Frederic Palmer. Of the Faculty of my time Professors Graves, McCurdy, Eaton, Forbes, and Benner most impressed my youthful mind.
"Association with such men and minds unconsciously built up for me an Andover standard of manliness and character which helped me in the most critical period of my life. In the latter part of the World War I was unexpectedly called upon to expand the personnel of the newly created Military Intelligence Division of the General Staff. The work could only be done properly by having a standard and applying it to each prospective appointee. My officers came from nearly every school and every college in the land, but I endeavored to apply to each appoint- ment the Andover standard of manliness which had been impressed upon me as a boy. In this way I began to see light in the darkness which clouded those troublous times.
"All this and more Howe to Andover and to the Andover traditions."
Page Forty -nine
"BIG BILL" EDWARDS:
Collector of Internal Revenue, New York City, and famous Princeton football player; brother of R. H. Edwards, '97, and cousin of the Rev. F. Boyd Edwards, '96
"Phillips Academy is rich in scholastic traditions. Your great preparatory school has always been admired for its true sportsmanship and the loyalty of the alumni is ever in evidence.
"Too much credit cannot be given the caretakers of this great school.
"May your Sesquicentennial celebration bring to the school a certain renewed interest on the part of the alumni which cannot help but be of great benefit to the school.
"As a graduate of Lawrenceville and one who has played football against Andover teams, I send you my heartiest congratulations and cordial greetings."
MARCUS MORTON, '79: Judge
"This old School would long since have ceased existence, had not the faith of its Founders, transmitted from one generation to another, been transmuted into concrete life by the idealism and practical wisdom of those fine masters, who, ever gazing upward and forward, but with feet firmly on the earth, gave their lives to the advancement of learning and the development of character.
"Generations may come and pass, but the life given to the School by them will endure. It is to them that all generations of scholars should bow their heads in grateful acknowledgment."
DR. SVEN V. KNUDSEN of Denmark
"Four boys represented Phillips Academy and America in Den- mark's homes in 1927. That was the first attempt to link selected Ameri- can boys with selected homes of Europe. The attempt was a success. "It assures all of the fact that what is best in Americais similar to what is best in Europe, and that the two continents are closer to each other than sceptics want us to imagine.
"As long as Americans stand up for true American ideals, there will be a solid bridge between America and Europe. May many cross that bridge."
DR. W. L. NUTE, '10:
Director of the American College at Tarsus, Republic of Turkey. During thirty-five of this school's forty-one vears, it has had an Andover president.
DR. EDWIN E. SLOSSON
Author, Literary Editor of the" Independent" (1903-20). Associate of Columbia School of Journalism; lecturer at Andover, 1927
ARTHUR W. RYDER:
Translator; Professor of Sanskrit at the University of California; Instructor at Phillips Academy, 1897-98
"I have been connected with schools, colleges, and universities in one way or another for forty-five years without a break. I feel that to all the rest together I owe less than to Phillips Academy. There was my true education, and there I spent a most happy year (1897-1898) teaching Latin."
PERCY GRAINGER: Australian Pianist and Composer
FRANCIS BRETT YOUNG: Novelist; author of "Love is Enough" and "W'ood- smoke"; lecturer at Andover, 1927
"The people of this country are growing more and more to believe in the things we stand for and seem eager to have us go forward hand in hand with them. One hundred and fifty years ago Andover was founded with the birth of a new Republic. Now a daughter of Andover finds her- self taking on new life, while in a new country another promising and progressive republic is being formed."
"What interested me most in my visit to Phillips Academy was the Museum of American Archaeology with its remarkable collection of relics of the races of the American continent before the arrival of the white man. The students of the Academy are exceptionally privileged to have the opportunity to see for themselves the remains of early Ameri- can life and the actual materials out of which the history of the past is reconstructed."
"I have the happiest memories of my visit to your wonderful insti- tute and send all that's in me, my most friendly greeting."
"Andover remains among my most pleasant memories of the United States. I send you my most cordial good wishes for theoccasion."
Page Fifty
VAN CAMPEN HEILNER, '18
F. R. G. S., author, explorer, associate editor of " Field and Stream"; head of Van Campen Heilner Alaskan Expedition for the American Museum of Natural History
MAJOR VIVIAN GILBERT: Actor; author, "The Romance of the Last Crusade," lecturer at Andover, 1923
JOE BLUNT:
Postman on Andover Hill for more than a generation
"JIM" RYLEY
JOHN STEWART: Andover's colored tailor for a quarter century
"HERB" CHASE:
for close to forty years outfitter for Andover's athletic teams
"I consider the years I spent at Andover had the greatest influence upon me of any during my life.
"As a moulder of character, democracy, ambition, and the funda- mentals of manhood, there is no institution in the world can approach it."
"I have the pleasantest memories of your fine school."
"Joe, where's my letters?" "Got one for me, Joe?"
"These have been familiar greetings to me from many dear old Phillips boys. Certainly there would be something physically wrong with me if I did not retain my youthful spirit after delivering those 'letters' for thirty years to the best of boys, who are attending the finest school of all.
The cry has been "Here's to Lindy and 'We'!" But now it's changing, always to be (Father to son, - son to the world -) "Here's to P. A .! Phillips Andover for me!"
"Returning to the greatest prep school of the country will remind you of the 'grilling' you received here."
"I am greatly honored to be able to say a word to my old friends and customers through this book. May this celebration be the greatest ever on Andover Hill, and may it mark a new era in the progress of the good old school."
"It was in 1877 that I first watched the football games at Andover and with few exceptions have seen all football and baseball games since then. What changes both in the way sports are conducted and the feel- ing between Andover and Exeter! What a change in the lesser sports! They were once street teams, class contests, and the such.
"In baseball they had a cannon at first and third base. One year a class left a cannon in my care at the store, and later another class gave me theirs to take charge of. I'll say for once I was between two fires. That same year we lost the Exeter track meet owing to Sol Metzger's being disciplined for getting in a rough house at 'Chap's' after being cautioned by Coach Kirkpatrick.
"What a splendid change now, and for the better! And through it al what a fine lot of boys and every one loyal to 'Herb'.
"I was at the Centennial of 1878 (sneaked under the tent), but for the Sesquicentennial I have a formal invitation."
THE AMERICAN RADIO RELAY LEAGUE INCORPORSTER
HARTFORD
CONNECTICUT
NADIO STATION
RADIOGRAM
RECEIVED
PHONE
NUMBER 243
PROM STATION WDP
LÖČATIÓ AT Antalok Bay. Labrador.
DAIF Feb. y
TIME
CHECK
OPERATOR
FROM
DATE
VIA
TO: A. Porter Thompson, Chairino, Sesquicentennial Record, Bartlett Hall, Andover, Mass.
Greetings to Andover, one of the best, from the snow-covered hills of northern Labrador. Having been a teacher of boys for ten years, naturally I am deeply Interested In the wonderful record that Phillips Academy has made in preparing boys for college and for the higher duties of life, Grounds, buildings, name, do not make a school. There is something far deeper than sucb. If your very excellent Headmaster, your Faculty, and students wore here with me among Indians and Eskimos, it would still be the same good school. May Andover live on, and may its name, Pbililos Acedemy, elways stand for something which means something. Donald B.MacMillan, Commander Rawson-Vac; illan-Field Museum Expedition.
.2/30 pm Feb. 9, 192%.
SENT
TO . TATION
LOCATED AT
DATE
CHECK
OPERATOR
Feb -
NOTICE 18 AODRE.4: THE SIATION DELIVERING TOU THIS MESSAGE WILL BE PLEASED TO FORWARD YOUR ROFLT WITHOUT CHARGE
CLASS OF SERVICE This is a full-tale Telegram ut Cable- pam unten w. dr. fried + hatdatet 1º 10+ Jur ale by a suitable ugn alive ur piered-
WESTERN UNION
SIGNS
Received at
- 8B × 95 NL
MEXICO CITY MAR 26 1928
A P THOMPSON
ATLET HALL AN! "VOR MA 'S
I AM GRATEFUL FOR YOU INVITATION IN CONNECTION WITH THE >_ RUICENTINN- IAL STOP IT HAS BEEN BY PRIVILEGE TO KNOW PRINCIPAL .TEAMS PERSONALLY FOR THIRTY FIVE YEARS AND HAVE KNOWN PHILLIPS ACADEMY FOR .VIN A LONGER TIME >TOP YOUR LONG AND HONORABLE RECORD IS AN AU LT FOR THE WHOLE NATION AND EVEN THOSE WHO AF NOT HAVE THE OPPORTUNITY OF ATT H- LING THE ACADE'TY MAY RIGHTFULLY REJOICE IN WHAT YOU HAVE DONE AND JUIN WITH YOU IN THE PRAYER THAT THE NENT HUNIREN AND FIFTY YEARS MAY BE EVEN MORE USEFUL THAN THOSE THAT HAVE PA SED
DWIGHT W MORROW 828AM
Page Fifty-one
Reminiscences of Andover in the Year 1892
BY CLIFFORD HERSCHEL MOORE Dean of Faculty of Arts and Sciences, Harvard University; Former Professor of Greek at Phillips Academy; Trustee of Phillips Academy
[AM not so fortunate as to be a Phillips Academy boy; but I did serve two happy years (1892-94) as Professor of Greek, succeeding Professor Coy; and now for nearly twenty-six years I have enjoyed the privilege of being a member of the Board of Trustees. I came to Phillips Academy after teaching for three years in a new school on the western edge of the United States, and therefore I could take a somewhat objective view of this ancient school.
No one, especially a New Englander by birth and training, coming new to Andover could fail to be im- pressed with the charm of the village and hill on which the Academy was set and with the delightful society that he found there. The presence of the Theological Seminary within and beside the Academy for eighty- five years had exerted an influence on a large part of the community that was extraordinary and in many ways ennobling: the austerity of an early time had largely departed; theological strife had lost most of its bitter- ness; men and women read, thought, and talked of serious and important matters without neglecting the light and joyous play of life which gives it grace and wholesomeness. All in all, in an experience now some- what wide and varied, I have never known a more delightful nor stimulating community than that to which my wife and I were generously welcomed in 1892.
The Academy had been doing a large part in creating this environment during the one hundred and fourteen years of its life. Three things greatly impressed me when I joined its teaching staff: the high character of the Faculty, the standard of work, and the value of a long and noble tradition.
The Faculty was small then compared with that of today. At its head was that wise and genial man, Dr. Bancroft, who, possessing an uncanny insight into the nature of the boys and their parents, guided the School quietly and effectively for so many years; Professor Graves in the Natural Sciences was a skillful teacher and a good councillor; and Mr. McCurdy in Mathe- matics had long been winning the grateful affection of boys and associates with a completeness that made him "Mac" to forty school generations. Of the teachers of my time six are valiantly carrying on today the great tradition. To my former colleagues, the dead and the jiving alike, I am bound by ties of esteem and gratitude.
The standard of work was good: then as now, I trust, boys were expected to "get their lessons", and to be- have like young gentlemen; and on the whole they did. Moreover, I found that boys were not coddled at An- dover, but that, given reasonable guidance, they had to learn to walk alone. One of the chief glories of Phillips Academy is that boys gain there the power to be in- dependent and the ability to find themselves intel- lectually and socially in a large group of their con- temporaries. In my day the lack of means made it impossible to encourage the best boys to make their maximum scholastic effort, but with the present splen- did endowment of the School this important service is being rendered more and more.
Yet above all other things I was continually reminded of the value of the Academy's great tradition: for one hundred and fourteen years then, one hundred and fifty now, in adversity and prosperity the great ideals of true piety and of learning - the great ends of living -- have been cherished with wisdom and devotion. I saw how the newcomers, myself with the rest, felt the challenge and inspiration of that noble past whose tradition we knew we must not mar but rather justify. Now after thirty-six years in which that tradition has been made more precious than ever before by the de- voted staff, I feel that it is the most valuable possession of Phillips Academy and the grestest assurance for the future.
If space allowed, I should like to enlarge on many other topics. I could speak of our delightful relations with the boys, some of them, long since holding high places of trust and power; then when sleep had held them too long, they would poach on our ice box for a cold breakfast -with our secret knowledge and amused consent; of that hot night in early June when, after eight, I sat on a table at "Chap's" and gleefully swung my feet against a boy who had dived under the table at my entrance and did not dare to try to escape my kicks. His face, when he caught my eye next morning, as he entered number 9, still makes me smile.
But these things would take me quite too far. Mem- ories of matters serious and gay combine to make my long association with Phillips Academy a cherished possession. May the ancient School do a yet nobler work in years to come !
Page Fifty-two
1
THE OLD CAMPUS AND LATIN COMMONS "In the Spring there was lots of Baseball"
A Paper and a School
BY JULIAN S. MASON, '94 Editor, New York Evening Post
W RITING for the Sesquicentennial Record from the Editorial chair of a newspaper now completing its one-hundred-and-twenty-seventh year, my mind instinctively sprang to a comparison of that life with the contemporaneous career of Phillips Andover. What has happened to American journalism in the last 150 years? Has it advanced with the splendid strides of the Academy on the hill?
Our newspapers are continually słanged for sins which some commit and for which all are blamed. Yet there is in the earliest beginnings of the American press much of the same quality of austere nobility which the Phillips family put into the founding of their schools. When Alexander Hamilton founded the New York Evening Post in the first year of the nineteenth century, there was formulated the statement of purpose that still stands daily at the head of its editorial columns:
"The design of this paper is to diffuse among the people correct information on all interesting sub- jects, to inculcate just principles in religion, morals and politics, and to cultivate a taste for sound literature."
If we substitute for the opening line "The design of this academy is to diffuse among its pupils", we would have a statement of idealistic purpose which would suit school instead of newspaper. There is and always has been an identity of moral aims between an honorable newspaper and a first-rank institution of learning.
The editors are equivalent to the principals. As Andover cherishes its great heads, like Adams or Ban- croft, so does my newspaper point with pride to the names of its former Editors, William Cullen Bryant, Horace White, Carl Schurz, and E. L. Godkin.
Such men kept burning the lamps of idealism. An- dover has had occasional halts in its long march up- wards. The end of a great principalship or the lack
of an able leader has made the academy have its dark hours now and again. But the school was soon picked up by a newer generation, its progress renewed, its power strengthened and increased.
Under Dr. Stearns and the men who surrounded him, the academy has for almost the first time come fully abreast of its times. Educationally and spiritually there is no finer school in the country today. And many a university would envy its physical plant. Its clean old New England soul is housed in the loveliest of modern buildings.
In this way Hamilton's paper has lived contempo- raneously. It has fallen into periods of depression and limited usefulness no less than nine times in its life. Yet as other publications either failed or were absorbed, each crisis has brought it a new editorship and a new period of service. Like the school, too, the newspaper has held true to its first high purposes and has merely used a modern plant to give better expression to them.
Journalism in America is in my judgment upon a higher plane than ever has been the case before. Critics go back to the great days of Greeley and Raymond to praise a "personal era" that is considered finer than the present day of more commercialized publishing. Let them turn to Greeley's handling of a presidential elec- tion; then let them see how the same situation is treated by the great papers of the present. Greeley's fire may be lacking, though this is by no means always true; but also there will be lacking Greeley's bias, and there will be added a meticulous, accurate presentation of in- formation such as Greeley never conceived.
This I say to prove my faith that a famous old news- paper has kept pace with a famous old school as they have gone down the years of America's life. May each long be spared to do increasing service to a common country.
Page Fifty - three
Delphi
BY ALLEN R. BENNER, '88 Professor of Greek at Phillips Academy
View from a back seat in the Theatre at Delphi
T HE tiny steamboat with its crew of swarthy Greeks touched at a village called Itea and we landed. There was waiting a comfortable carriage drawn by three horses, sturdy and tough, harnessed abreast. These trotted briskly, now by a gradual ascent, now over a plain, on the new road winding toward Parnassus. Two thousand years ago - two thousand and five hundred years ago - people may have travelled over a more direct trail, but less com- fortably. In the ancient days, riding in carts, or on horseback, or on foot, they were journeying to the seat of their great god Apollo, presided over by his living ministers. Today, we were visiting fallen marble ruins, untenanted save by a distant and sleepy guard. So we journeyed and enjoyed the expansive view - above us, the mountain peaks; and below us, the "irresistible" sea.
Part way on our journey, the driver halted his horses at a watering trough. And meanwhile our interest was held by a venerable priest (all Greek priests, with flowing beards, look venerable) who from a second story balcony harangued a crowd of peasants. We had stopped in a little hamlet. A few youngsters, with curious eyes, watched us; but the villagers for the most part - the congregation seemed to include everybody - were intent on the words of the priest. A new doc- trine had replaced the oracles of Apollo.
We departed unnoticed and climbed again. What wonderful groves of olive trees, what superb patches of green, stretched far, far away, as we gazed down toward the blue water!
On the edge of the evening we entered a small but comfortable inn, situated not far from the place of ancient pilgrimage. How peaceful, how solitary all seemed! About three o'clock in the morning, however, I was aroused from sleep by a tremendous pounding at the entrance, directly below my bedroom. The thought of brigands - I recollected Le Roi des Mon- tagnes - immediately occurred to me. But soon there
was quiet again, and I was asleep before 1 ascertained who had gained admission.
At breakfast the next morning we found two young Princeton men who admitted that they had uninten- tionally played the part of brigands. They had come by moonlight over the ancient trail from Thebes, on horseback.
In the coolness of the early morning we wandered along the road toward the Sacred Way. We encoun- tered nobody except a peasant woman with a couple of "beasts of burden". As she watered the animals from a trough by the roadside, we visited the grotto nearby, which we believed must hold the Castalian Spring.
Then we climbed the Sacred Way, fallen blocks of marble on each side bearing witness to many structures of old. A reconstructed "Treasury of the Athenians" aided our imagination. We lingered a while on the masses of marble and on the sills where once the Temple of Apollo had stood. All was desolation. We looked for the cleft in the rocks of the temple floor whence the narcotic vapor is said to have issued - the reputed cause of the inspiration of the Delphic priestess. But it had vanished, with priestess and priests. Even the ingenious French excavators, it would seem, had found no trace of the famous chasm.
Next, we sat in the marble seats of the ancient theatre nearby - a gem of antiquity - and mused for a long time. Was the "Ion" ever played here? And other more famous tragedies? We did not try, however, to imagine the music of flutes intoning the Delphic hymns.
Now we climbed higher, to get a wider view; and we were rewarded by our arrival at the Stadium. How complete it was! It was situated on a shelf, partly artificial, of the slope of Parnassus. After resting in the seats, we took our places at the starting point of the foot race. My companion, once a famous runner on the (Continued on page 74)
A peasant woman with her "beasts of burden " on the carriage road at Delphi
Page Fifty -four
An Andover Dreamer
BY RAYMOND WEEKS, '87 Professor of Romance Languages at Columbia University and Author of the Best Short Story of 1927
T THE early night train from Denver east. For half an hour, I had sat alone in the smoking compart- ment, watching the mountains disappear in the dark- ness, when there came in a polite, smooth-shaven, thin- featured man of about my age, wearing a coat unusually black, cut unusually long. He sat down, drew from his pocket a panatella cigar, held it for a few minutes in his thin fingers, lighted it slowly, and commenced to smoke carefully, delicately. He sat on the edge of the seat, and looked uncomfortable. There was in him something precise, honest, ineffectual - almost clerical or pro- fessorial. We soon began to converse. His vocabulary was large, accurate, elegant, and his pronunciation that of a cultivated New Englander. After a while, I said to him with a smile:
"Exeter, or Andover?"
He looked at me surprised :
"Andover. What made you suspect me?"
"A gift we Phillips boys often have for recognizing one another!"
"But why did you not say: 'Andover, or Exeter'?"
"Affair of courtesy : I'm an Andover boy."
"Ah! I see!" We shook hands, and our conversation became reminiscent. There was mention of many men who had once been mighty on Andover Hill - men like Bancroft, McCurdy, Graves, Coy, Comstock, Churchill. "Trainers of great dreamers they were, " my companion said. "Andover is the training ground of dreamers - perhaps I am a dreamer myself . . . "
"In what way?"
"You see, I am out lecturing in favor of peace - world peace, we call it. I also lectured on the subject of armaments for several months prior to the Washington Conference."
"Who paid your expenses?"
"The churches - we had a fund ... "
"Who provided it?"
"Mostly the peace foundations, I think. Then,
contributions from the various churches ... "
"Protestant churches, I suppose?"
"Yes, the Catholics took no part."
"It has not occurred to you that they were perhaps right for once - that we Protestants are running about in circles, to give ourselves the illusion of having some- thing to do?"
"You speak as if we were finished."
"In a sense we are. A few generations, and we shall be a visible minority in this country, but what we fought for will not perish."
"What is that?"
"The freedom of thought - of research. Our re- ligion has become an ethical system, which is the final form of every religion. We shall continue to diminish in numbers, until, sometime within two centuries, there will come another Reformation. It will consecrate the researches of Protestant scholars."
"Then you think that we who talk of pacifism are running round in a circle - that we are dreamers?"
Need help finding more records? Try our genealogical records directory which has more than 1 million sources to help you more easily locate the available records.